What would it take to make Land Raiders viable.

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**Xenomancers**

Kap'n Krump wrote:
Xenomancers wrote:

Personally - I think they should be given super heavy status and a points increase. Keep the rules they have now with some new ones and an additional hull point.

I'm thinking 325 points
Same weapon options and transport capacity but now a super heavy tank with 5 HP. 14/14/14.

A bit late for the party, there is something pretty close - the Spartan assault tank. 4x twin linked lascannons, 25-man transport cap (!), 5 HP, 295 points. I thought it was a SHV, but after looking again it is not.

That.....honestly sounds like a decent deal to me, as LRs are already like 250 points or something.

Be careful what you wish for, though. Occupants of a SH transport all take str10 ap2 hits if their vehicle runs out of HP - even if it is glanced to death, it goes boom. And take it from me, as having used a kustom battle fortress many times, those HPs go fast and it SUCKS when it explodes with dudes inside.

That is something I have never even considered. Super heavy no. How about something like a serpant sheild. On a 2+ any penetrating hit is reduced to a glance?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

jade_angel wrote:
Trouble with making it Heavy is, it's limited to only a 6" move. No Cruising Speed, no Flat Out. It's bad enough that you can only move 6" the turn you want to disembark, but to also remove the ability to bend on maximum speed on Turn 1, so you'll be in position turn 2 even if you get immobilized, basically makes the Land Raider near-useless except as a gun platform, which is a role it doesn't perform particularly well.

Ok, here's a possible variant: all base-Codex Land Raider variants get Fast and +2 Transport Capacity. Additionally, they gain:

Reinforced Drive Systems: If the vehicle suffers a Crew Stunned or Immobilized result on the Vehicle Damage Table, roll a d6. On a 4+, treat the result as a glancing hit instead. If the vehicle additionally has Extra Armour, this roll may be attempted before the Extra Armour mitigates a Stunned result to Shaken.

Ammunition blowout panels: If the vehicle suffers an Explodes! result on the Vehicle Damage Table, roll a d6. On a 4+, treat the result as Weapon Destroyed instead.

Reinforced Armor: A vehicle with Reinforced Armor has a 6+ invulnerable save against shooting attacks (including Witchfires).

Additionally, all three base-codex variants would have their costs reduced by 50 points. The Godhammer lascannons on the Phobos would be able to fire with one of two profiles:

R48 S9 AP2 Heavy 1 Twin-Linked --OR--
R48 S9 AP2 Heavy 2

<thinko fix>

I really like those ideas. Question - why would you every chose twinlinked heavy 1 over heavy two on the lazcannon profiles?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Deadshot wrote:
Yeah, the Spartan is everything the Land Raider wants to be.

Honestly, Land Raiders are only feasible using the formation from the SM Codex that makes you take 3, and makes them immune to damage results except Explodes! If they atay within 6" of each other, but even then, that's still 720-850pts (dependent on variant and upgrades) for 3 models. If Land Raiders could ignore such results all the time, for 250pts, they'd be autotakes. Right now the only option is to drop them to 180pts, seeing as everything else got a pts reduction too, the Land Raider should too. AV14 and 4 HP isn't even that durable. Sure, more durable in base game. But a few turns of some Str 8 hits and poof, gone. Not even counting Necrons who don't giving a circus monkey about HP or AV numbers, who's base troop squad can wipe any vehicle off the board in 1 round, even superheavies if they roll enough dice.

I've seen a lot of people running the spartan. Pretty decent actually.

**jade_angel**

Xenomancers wrote:

jade_angel wrote:
Trouble with making it Heavy is, it's limited to only a 6" move. No Cruising Speed, no Flat Out. It's bad enough that you can only move 6" the turn you want to disembark, but to also remove the ability to bend on maximum speed on Turn 1, so you'll be in position turn 2 even if you get immobilized, basically makes the Land Raider near-useless except as a gun platform, which is a role it doesn't perform particularly well.

Ok, here's a possible variant: all base-Codex Land Raider variants get Fast and +2 Transport Capacity. Additionally, they gain:

Reinforced Drive Systems: If the vehicle suffers a Crew Stunned or Immobilized result on the Vehicle Damage Table, roll a d6. On a 4+, treat the result as a glancing hit instead. If the vehicle additionally has Extra Armour, this roll may be attempted before the Extra Armour mitigates a Stunned result to Shaken.

Ammunition blowout panels: If the vehicle suffers an Explodes! result on the Vehicle Damage Table, roll a d6. On a 4+, treat the result as Weapon Destroyed instead.

Reinforced Armor: A vehicle with Reinforced Armor has a 6+ invulnerable save against shooting attacks (including Witchfires).

Additionally, all three base-codex variants would have their costs reduced by 50 points. The Godhammer lascannons on the Phobos would be able to fire with one of two profiles:

R48 S9 AP2 Heavy 1 Twin-Linked --OR--
R48 S9 AP2 Heavy 2

<thinko fix>

I really like those ideas. Question - why would you every chose twinlinked heavy 1 over heavy two on the lazcannon profiles?

Hmm. Y'know, that's a good point there. Heck, dump the twin-linked profile altogether. Mostly keeping it out of deference to tradition.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Rune Stonegrinder wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
HOW is FW the biggest culprit with power creep? They make 2-3 extremely odd units compared to the dozens that GW does?

It's my opinion, there are a lot of models that take existing units and bends or breaks the rules. Forgeworld mentality....... Oh that unit doesn't have enough ap 3-2 weaponry......make a new arm bit .......bamm..... tanks become one step more to useless. Later they'll realize tanks aren't viable, well lets make a few new turrets and/or add some special rules anddddd.....bam better. right?

Wrong!

You are right the problem starts with GW, but forgeworld does not help matters by making unit type A better so later they need to make unit type B better.

That's stupid logic.

Sicarans being good doesn't stop Predators from being mediocre, and Spartan Assault Tanks existing didn't lead to Land Raiders being terrible.

**Martel732**

Land Raiders would be useless even if there were no Spartan. To be honest, I'm not super crazy about the Spartan even. The explosion rules are harsh.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Once you give the Spartan some Ceramite and the Mars Legacy, the only thing that will harm it consistently is D-Weapons, which means a T2 charge is almost guaranteed. That said, it costs 350 points at that point.

There's just no winning, really.

**NorseSig**

The only way I would take a Land Raider of any type at 170-200 points would be if they all gained 2 in transport capacity and could fire all weapons at full Ballistic skill at all times.

**Lythrandire Biehrellian**

Land raiders do fine, adjust the escalating potency weapons that are so prevalent in the game instead.

StrD, does d3 hullpoints, counts as a pen but doesn't roll on the table unless the target was a superheavy, a 6 becomes d3+3

Haywire causes a crew shaken on a 2-5, a6 let's you roll on the damage chart, but it doesn't remove hullpoints.

There, now it won't blow up from D weapons, just wrecked, and haywire won't kill it, just mitigate it's shooting a bit.

I am also in favor of the top mounted guns having optional skyfire (choose to have it, not mandatory)

**Slayer-Fan123**

So SD will still blow them up and THEN you suggest a way to make Haywire weapons useless.

Excellent fixes there, Lyth.

**Lythrandire Biehrellian**

StrD doesn't blow them up, simply takes hullpoints away. If you read it, it states that it only counts as a penetrating hit (mostly to drop quantum shielding, that was an issue my group found when we tried to simply make it a glance) and you only roll on the damage table when TARGETING superheavy vehicles. Let's them threaten other big units on a greater scale while not invalidating every tank in the game.

Also, the biggest gripe you see on vehicle durability is how rediculously easy it is to strip hullpoints. The biggest culpret is haywire because all it does is strip hullpoints. So, making haywire a tactical choice to disrupt the enemies ability to fight for a turn as opposed to simply deleteing vehicles at will makes the vehicles in the game significantly more reliable in regards to survival.

With these changes, you see more heavy antitank weapons on the table because there are only so many suicide melta vets to scatter around.

**Slayer-Fan123**

HP being stripped is only part of the issue. A Land Raider that can't move might as well have been blown up, so NO that's not coming close to fixing the issue.

Also, that really just makes Haywire useless. You can call it a Tactical Choice all you want, but both Melta and Haywire usually need to be close to have any effect, so you might as well take the chance of blowing something up and possibly rolling that result. Plus, nobody is going to care if they stop shooting from a bloody Land Raider for a turn because Land Raiders have terrible damage output anyway. It fails as a battle tank and fails as a transport.

So NO, your proposed fixes do not have any effect on the Land Raider. They need a severe point decrease and the classic pattern needs a capacity of 12 like it used to.

**Martel732**

At this point, the concept is a complete failure.